Today's Opinions

I enjoy my job about 80 percent of the time. For the most part, coming into the office is not work. It's about the challenges I will face as I watch the puzzle you call a newspaper come together from all over the building into one tight little package.

The last week of June I received a call from Francis Akins to tell me one of his staff was retiring. It was too close to deadline to do anything for that week's paper, but I pledged I'd be in Bronson Friday afternoon.

As voters across Levy County mark absentee ballots, drive to Bronson for early voting or prepare to go to the polls Tuesday, one of the biggest questions they should ask is "Who will do the best job for me?"

Elected officials are often called public servants because their chief role is to serve the people who elect them into office.

And because your tax dollars pay the salaries of these men and women, you should make your voting decision just as if you were the owner of a business hiring a new employee.

Serving 53 consumers from its location in Otter Creek, the Levy Association for Retarded Citizens (LARC) provides much needed training for people who are searching for a way to adapt in a world that is not always kind to them.

Since July 2003, adult daycare funding has been cut 24 percent in the state of Florida and on July 1, 2008 the most recent cuts went into effect. Already LARC's executive director Betty Walker has cut staff hours and rearranged other staff members to serve the needs of their clients.

For two days I have mourned the loss of my neighbors-not the sitcom stars of 50 years ago but an entire convocation of spiders, presumably banana spiders, that have resided at my back door all summer and most recently decided to expand their lodging to the front door.

For the last three summers, I have watched their homes develop over days, weeks and months- lacework webs that bear intricate patterns and designs.

I have a friend who keeps her watches and clocks set an hour ahead at all times. By doing so, this perpetually late creature of habit has convinced herself that she is always tardy, and when she does show up for appointments, she's on time or early.

Now of course, somewhere deep within her psyche she knows that her clocks and watches are wrong and that could give her incentive to dally more and being really, really late.

But she's used her imagination enough over the years that the con works, thereby saving her from embarrassment and reprimand from family and employer alike.

It is said that the death of a child is the most difficult pain to bear: far-more soul wrenching than losing a parent, a sibling or a life partner.

It is also said that it takes a village to raise a child.

And so last September, when Army Specialist Brandon Tyler Thorsen was killed in the line of duty while voluntarily serving his country in Iraq, the villages of Trenton, Chiefland and the surrounding area joined his parents as we mourned our child.